Angel Gilbert is a rising second-year student at Columbia College, and is honored to be a 2023 Miller Prize Award for her work with the organization Witness To Mass Incarceration.
During her time at Witness to Mass Incarceration, Angel worked alongside the executive director, Evie Litwok, and the rest of the journalist team to publicize the experiences of those behind bars, writing not only about incarcerated individuals but also about the parents, children, or friends that they leave behind. Angel's work is informed by her experience being placed in an inhumane child welfare system as her mother served time, and witnessing first-hand a system quick to disrupt secure placements but slow to provide rehabilitative care.
In her internship presentation, Angel said: “After completing my internship with Witness To Mass Incarceration, my passion to become a criminal justice attorney has intensified even more. I now understand that my mother and the struggles she faced are the norm amongst the formerly incarcerated community. Therefore I look forward to applying all the skills Evie taught me with my internship with the ACLU this fall. I will be working on their National Prison Project which focuses on ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, and detention centers comply with the requirements of the US Constitution, federal law, and international human rights principles. Some of their goals include ending domestic torture, protecting safety in prison, and promoting access to the courts.”
**The Miller Human Rights Award supports graduate and undergraduate human rights students who seek to deepen their experience through study abroad or volunteer work. The placements provide substantive and thoughtful engagement, through a human rights lens, with communities experiencing socio-economic inequities, forms of discrimination, or other types of institutional or societal marginalization. The award is generously funded by Steve Miller, CC '95, Chief Financial Officer at Warby Parker, and board member of Ubuntu Pathways.
